One of my criteria in my own personal rating of performers as ‘folk’ (and avoiding the usual ‘What is folk, definition problems) is that I’ve seen them ‘au naturel’.    I’ve always been impressed by those ‘professionals’ who get down to their local sessions and take their turn in a singaround with the rest of us. It’s one of the things that makes ‘folk’ special to me (and, yes, I’m sure there are plenty of other genres that it could be applied to as well.) Thankfully, I could list a fair few reasonably well-known names who seem quite happy just to drop in to their local sessions, although none of the nominees above is on it – but, to be fair, that may just be that I don’t live near any of them. I realise that, if you’re performing for a living, you probably won’t want, or perhaps be able, to spend all your free time doing what you’re doing for a job but there are singers/musicians that I’ve seen over the years that seem to be happy to drop in from time to time, perhaps attending because they enjoy the music and even enjoy the idea of what they do being ‘of the folk’ and being part of this themselves.

Perhaps there should be a ‘folk awards’ category for ‘stars’ who also take the time to be ‘folk’.